Now I realise that this title might sound like the beginning of a series of posts that will have even more episodes than the Avengers film franchise, or for those of you who are my age, even more films than in the Sly Stallone Rocky series, minus the boxing. And I’ve purposely not indicated how many episodes there might be, so like that I’m covered and I know you’ll just keep coming back for more.

As you might have guessed, and I think I’ve already said before; let me just go back and check… Yes I have said before, my big lockdown project was to eat cake, drink tea, take a couple of photos and get this film photography funk over and done with, like flared trousers in 1980.

With the help of YouTube, calming myself the “f” down, and a couple of purchases on Internet, I sorted myself out. Now I knew that I could take a reasonable photo. But developing was a different matter. I had lost confidence, and it was time to grab the bull by the horns, which is easier than grabbing it elsewhere, and just start at the very beginning, which as Julie Andrews reminded us, is a very good place to start.

When you take photos with an analogue camera, you need an analogue camera, check, some film, check, and then you load the film into the aforementioned film camera, and go out and take some photos. I did this in my village, and you’ll be able to see where I walked: the vines, the park, and the prairie where there are lots of ponds, with lots of ducks who had been doing what ducks do in the Spring and swimming with the ducklings and being fed bread by my daughter. The noise of the frogs, the animals, and not my fellow villagers from the Vendée, was deafening!

When you get back from your walk, you disappear into your bedroom and set out the developing kit, minus the chemicals, on your bed, and hope that you still remember how to get the film from inside the film canister, onto a plastic spool, which goes into a drum, and then a cover goes onto the drum to keep everything away from any light. Oh yes, you do this by putting everything you need into a developing bag, and doing all this by touch and without seeing what you’re doing. If this sounds like a lot of faffing about when you can just use your phone to take “pics”, well you’d be right, but I’ll get back to you on that, later on.

You take this “drum” into the bathroom, and put it on a shelf and then prepare you chemicals. You will need a developer, a stop, and a fix, and I’m not talking about smoking a cigarette that makes people laugh. The developer will make the pictures (in negative) appear on the film. The stop, you’re not going to believe this, will actually “stop” this process, and the fix, will fix the image on the negative by disolving the excess emulsion that was on the film. Then you have the cleaning process which will allow you to have some wonderfully clean negatives that will dry, and then can be cut up into strips, and then put into sheets that will protect the negatives.

But enough of all this negativity! Let’s make those negatives into positives… Bloody hell I’m sounding like some American self-help book! I do this by scanning each negative which will make a positive, and I end up with a picture on my computer. Yayyy, go me. Good job I’m not called Nads!

As you can see I’m really into recycling in a big way, because I’m sure I’ve used that joke before.

I then class these photos by camera used to take them, and by date. It’s my OCD going into overdrive again. My house is untidy despite the efforts of my long suffering wife, but my hard drives are so well organised, that a librarian would be proud of me.

After this I get to play with the images on my computer and then after minimal editing, I publish them, either on Instagram, on Facebook, or here.

So I have these images ready to share with you. But further up I talked about faffing about and why don’t I just used my phone like everyone else. Well? Firstly I’m not like everyone else as my parents will tell you. Some people will say the film photography is about slowing down. You take your time to think about the shot, you look at the scene before you and take the time to decide what elements are interesting, what to include and what not to include. You think if this picture that I can see I my mind’s eye is worth taking and worth the expense and time to develop it. But that’s only part of the story. I like the process of capturing the photo with film. You click the shutter, wind on the film, don’t look at the back of your camera to check if your picture turned out OK or not, and hope for the best. With time, this becomes “normal” and might teach you some patience. I also like using the old camera. It’s looks better hanging around my neck than my phone. When people see you using a film camera, people look at you as if you are more worthy, and a craftsman exercising his craft. There’s the touchy feely side of actually going through an analogue process and manipulating something tangible and getting a result from that process, instead of just creating an electric image. The quality of those images with the famous “grain” may not be as sharp as some digital images, but they have a certain quality about them that cannot be produced digitally. There’s also the thing about converting nearly all my digital into black and white, so why not just cut out the middle man and do everything on black and white film?

The two main film cameras that I use are the Canon AE1 Program, and the Pentax ME Super. I have others of course, but these are the main two and the following photos were taken on the Pentax using a 50mm F1.7lens and Ilford HP5 black and white film.

I seem to have this habit of going into Nantes with my camera and using it as an excuse to have some me time, eat cake, and drink tea. Now I’ve been told about how self-care is important but it’s beginning to show around my waist. I think it might be making me lazy as far as photography is concerned too.

So, what to do? Go somewhere else that doesn’t have tea and cake! I also wanted to keep away from towns and cities. Too much familiarity, and I wanted to see if my Canon 6D Mark II still worked. It does. Yipee. And I wanted to set my self the constraint of using just my 50mm F1.8, the famous nifty fifty!

I love my Fujifilm cameras and haven’t switched back or anything but change is good.

It was a beautifully sunny day and just before midday. I got a sandwich at a bakery and headed off towards the coast. The car knows the first part of the way there as it’s the way to work. I passed the factory and gave her a swift hello. It looks so empty without her workers going about their daily duties. Maybe she needs a weekend as much as we do. Anyway…

I arrived at Beauvoir Sur Mer and passed the holiday home of a friend from the band. I didn’t see the car so continued without stopping. I arrived at the Port du Bec, and made my way down towards the boats wondering how those ramshackle wooden jetties can support the weight of a fisherman… Needless to say, I didn’t try to find out. Erring on the side of caution. I may not have the wisdom of an old man, but I’m not daft either. Maybe the beginnings of wisdom are that we know that we know nothing, but that we are too big to go and play silly buggers!

The blue sky was reflected in the sea. It felt great to be alive. The sun really makes a difference after so much rain. And I wasn’t the only one out. Over the bay I could see Noirmoutier in the distance protecting us from ravages of the Atlantic. All was calm. I like calm. I like calm about as much as I do tea and cake. I walked down to the sea and gently walked back towards the car and off to my next destination, the Passage du Gois.

The Passage du Gois is a passage. The clue is in the name… It is the passage between the mainland and the island of Noirmoutier on the Vendée coast. The particularity is that, like Lindesfarne in Northumberland, it is covered by the sea at high tide. However on the Passage du Gois, that tide can roll in faster than a galloping horse at a rather quick gallop.

One of the local spectator sports is watching motorists trying to beat the tide and there is a real danger that they might not make it. That’s what those beacons are for. They actually have a foot race where the runner finish with wet feet!

When the tide is out it’s a different matter all together. I once took a couchsurfer from the US there. We parked on the sand and watched people fishing for shellfish. She’d never seen anything like it in her life!

It felt great and the sea air always does me good. I might just have to go back…

This weekend I haven’t taken any photos, but as they say so well in Blue Peter, here’s one I made earlier. These photos are now two weeks old. They were taken from different sides of the Loire. The first were taken in the Hangar à Bananes on the Saturday when I was with my daughter, and the ones overlooking the Loire the day after when I went to see my pregnant friend, who, by the way, is no longer pregnant, and has a new baby at home.

More important news for the family. My son has passed his driving test. This is of course wonderful and we are very happy for him. However it means that he has to have a car to drive and find work. He had the choice between my “Dad” car, and his mother’s smaller car. As he’s over 6 feet, he decided on my car. It also has cruise control, and a speed limiter, so there’s no excuse to get pulled over for driving too fast. This is all well and good,but it means that I have to get a new car. Ah well. Somebody has to sacrifice himself, and so I sacrificed myself.

Now with a new car, even a second-hand car, you have to get used to it and take posession of the space. Now I don’t know about you Dear Reader, but I seem to spend quite a lot of time in my car. It’s like an extension of my home. When you see people picking their noses in a traffic jam, it’s because they are, in their heads of course, still at home and behave as if they were. I listen to music in it. I eat in it. I drink in it (water of course). And I use it to go to places to take photographs.

So that Sunday, I thought, ok, I’ll go into town, and I took my camera along with me just in case… Yeah well, I know “you” believe me.

Where am I going with this? Yes, the photos from the North side of the Loire were taken on the Sunday when I saw my pregnant friend, at the Butte Sainte Anne, where I had been once before and messed up my film development. Right. I’d taken the first photos from one side of the river, and the next day, I took photos on the other side of the river. That makes sense doesn’t it?

The Jules Verne (a native of Nantes) Museum is at the top of the hill, and the statue of the boy is Jules as a boy. The other statue is of Capitaine Némo with his sextant looking down the river towards the sea.

The Monday was the 11th of November, Armistice Day, and it’s a public holiday here in France. I thought it would be good to spend some quality time with my daughter.

She is my reluctant model, but will allow me to take a couple of shots of her. Then she starts getting moody, and says, “aller Papa, on se dépêche làààààà!” So I make a noise and continue my way. And then stop to take another photo. This of course is the last straw and I’m told how “j’en ai marre Papa. Aller!!!” So I move on. We try and find the Altercafé only to find that it has changed owners and no longer exists. I see her dreams of Orangina and chocolate brownie go up in smoke. As any father worth his salt, I make sure we find somewhere else. We ended up going to Evil M (or Mac Donalds for the uninitiated). It was during this outing that I took the photos of the huge crane.

I made it up to her this Saturday by going into town and having tea at Chop Chop. She had a hot chocolate, and I had French Earl Grey tea. We also had a Brookie. It is a concoction which is a mixture of chocolate brownie and chocolate chip cookie. It’s the kind of thing that makes you put on weight by just looking at it. Bad, and yet so good at the same time.

Now this week I decided to go back to the cathedral for mass. I was seeing a different friend this time, and we hadn’t seen each other for about a year for various reasons, but she got me when she said she’d baked a cake! A rather nice one too. I said I would bring the tea.

The French are great with food, and cake, but tea is not their forte! Every time I go back to the UK I always stock up Yorkshire tea, which is like drinking a cup of home each time I make a cuppa. My friend is Algerian and appreciates tea about as much as I do. It’s always the small things you miss. It has been known for me to spend a lot of time and effort just to go and find that little something. When we were on holiday in Honfleur this Summer, they had an English section in the local supermarket. Needless to say, the children and I bought a big bag full of stuff, and had to go back to get what my French wife had told us to get… Oops.

Soooo… We talked, drank tea, ate cake, talked again, drank more tea, and ate more cake. I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon when the weather is so depressing outside. However I didn’t make the same mistake as I did last time. Oh no. I had learnt my lesson. I peed before going off to mass. I made sure I had enough time not to have to walk at a brisk pace and with purpose. The service was lovely and the music was amazing. It adds so much to the mass, and the organist played at the end of mass while I said my rosary. I left the cathedral and headed off to get a burger.

In the street where the pub is, there’s a new place that sells vegan burgers, and it’s such a refreshing change, and the owner is a great guy. And as I’m a well brought up gentleman I went to the pub to say hello to my friends working behind the bar. Again, that is the only excuse you’re going to get.

The weather today is officially depressing and even more so because it’s a Monday. I was so annoyed with life that it now is Friday afternoon. 5 days to get to the second sentence is possibly a sign. Of what, I don’t know…

The tree that is in the photo is “my tree” that I pass every day to and from work. I’d taken photos of it on film, and in digital but hadn’t been back to see her for a while. I’ve just checked Instagram and the last photo I took dates from February 2017! It’s as if I had neglected a friend that I had not seen for ages but still pass in the street just exchanging glances and a swift hello.

It was time to remedy the situation. I had left her in black and white, and returned to her in black and white. She didn’t have much to say for herself. Being a tree might have something to do with that, but she was still there. Still covered in ivy. Still with all her branches. Still a part of my workday.

The field of maize was still there. The maize replacing the wheat harvested in Summer. By Tuesday it had been harvested and all you could see in the field were the remains of stalks not over 6 inches high, and yet the day before had been as high as a man. Time goes on and the field will be used to produce a winter crop. Such is the way in the countryside.

Some fields had be let to fallow and recover from growing our food. Nature reclaims them for herself and plants grow up the fence posts and in the ditches by the sides of the road. At least they’ve gone back to green instead of the drier washed out colours of a hot summer.

It’s now Friday afternoon and I was only at work this morning. The sun is out, I’m in a t-shirt, and it’s 19°C. The rain has done its job, and isn’t there to dampen the earth or my mood. When I was a child I imagined the rain being God having a shower. I couldn’t bring myself to think of Him having a wee on creation.

Omaha Beach was one of the five beaches that had to be taken on D Day, 6th July 1944. That task was given to the 1st and 29th Infantry Division of the US Army. To say they took a hammering is an understatement, and General Bradley saw the very grave situation, and one stage nearly abandoned the operation. The grit and determination of his men paid off and they took the beach, but the amount of casualties and dead was tremendous, around 2000 men. A great sacrifice was made that day.

Whilst on that beach, I saw American families turn up, and the emotion was visible on their faces. It is almost a spiritual experience for them, and a form of pilgrimage. The dead are remembered, not only by the few that survived, but by the local population , and the French in general. Just next to the beach, there is the American War Cemetery at Coleville sur Mer. The prisitne graves serve as a reminder to those of us that didn’t experience what they did: the horrors of war!

I remember seeing footage of an old veteran who landed on Omaha, saying that the greatest reward they had, was to see children playing on that beach now, enjoying the peace that was earned by those men who lay down their lives on that same beach all those years ago.

I’ve decided to share photos of both the beach and the cemetery with you. The camera used that day was the Canon 6D Mark II with the 16-35mm Canon lens.

It was that time of the month. The month of December that is. In between Christmas and the New Year. Those days where you’re in food limbo and don’t know what day it is..

Let me explain… Last Summer we went on our annual visit to see my parents in Northumberland. My son was working at the time and couldn’t come with us. My daughter had her two parents all to herself.

Towards the middle of Autumn, my father was in hospital and we we’re all very worried. I hadn’t received “the” call to come home but I was in a bit of a state about the whole thing. Wanting to spend time with him etc, and during Autumn and Winter I tend to get very homesick. My parents were about to go on a cruise over Christmas and the doctors said that he couldn’t go, as they “wanted to keep an eye on him.” As it turned out, he didn’t have pancreatic cancer, and just need his heart medication changing. But I felt so crappy living miles away and not being able to do anything, and failing completely as a dutiful son.

I had once jokingly said, “You know I’m capable of coming over to see you.” To which he replied, “You are capable of many things!” Well that had stayed in my mind, and as Autumn turned into Winter I decided that my son and I would go and see both my parents. We decided on staying in Edinburgh, and we could take the train down and see them. All this to explain what the heck I was doing in Scotland.

I got the poor bugger out of bed before the crack of down, and headed down for breakfast. Not just an ordinary breakfast. Oh no. We don’t do Ordinary. I had the full Scottish breakfast and as I was piling up the sausage, haggis, baked beans, roast potatoes, bacon, mushrooms, and the obligatory HP Sauce onto plate one, I could hear my heart saying something that rhymes with “Oh Clucking Bell!” Funnily enough, it had given up when I got the toast and blackcurrant jam, and the natural Greek yogourt, with cornflakes and red fruit. Gotta stay healthy folks! And Tea. Proper tea. I mean the tea that just gives you a cuddle as you drink it. not this French “infusion” rubbish that looks like something the cat did when it was upset with you. Oh no. None of that. I was home!

Right, now to the geeky bit about what camera I was using. As we only had hand luggage I decided to leave the DSLR at home and only take the Fuji X100F. It’s a great little camera and a joy to shoot with. Between you and me, I actually think it’s my favourite camera. A bit needy in the battery department, if you know what I mean… But I take spares with me.